


Processing

by manic_intent



Category: Deadpool (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Full spoilers, M/M, That Postcanon AU where Wade and Cable work out a few things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 00:15:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14705519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: “You know, time travel stories are seriously lame,” Wade said, as he lay on the couch. “It all goes down to ‘if you can go back in time, why don’t you kill Hitler?’ which is a polarising way to look at it. No wonder it pissed off test audiences.”“Wade.”“I mean, I’ve only ever liked one time travel story ever.A Sound of Thunder. Some asshole steps on a butterfly and fucks things up for everyone. Story of my life, right there.”





	Processing

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. You wait 9 years and they’d make a film of your OTP. I don’t even. I used to ship Cable x Deadpool way back, before portmanteaus even became a serious thing. Before AO3. When everything was on livejournal. I’m still amazed. ~~I do wish they cast Stephen Lang as Cable but welp~~.

“You know, time travel stories are seriously lame,” Wade said, as he lay on the couch. “It all goes down to ‘if you can go back in time, why don’t you kill Hitler?’ which is a polarising way to look at it. No wonder it pissed off test audiences.”

“Wade.”

“I mean, I’ve only ever liked one time travel story ever. _A Sound of Thunder_. Some asshole steps on a butterfly and fucks things up for everyone. Story of my life, right there.”

“ _Wade_.” 

Wade made a shushing gesture. “I meant that as a metaphor. I have never stepped on any butterfly like ever. Anyway. The thing is, time travel is a lazy plot device. Does it just bisect an existing timeline into more timelines? Or is there just one timeline, that keeps getting fucked over? In which case, isn’t the Marvel way of engaging new authors every so often to ‘shake things up’ the equivalent of time travel? I’m pretty sure you’re also Wolverine in Earth-2107. Or Wolverine is you. Not sure how that works out. You guys aren’t even meant to be the same height.” 

“ _Wade!_ ”

“Maybe Hugh Jackman’s the problem. Maybe Hugh’s fucked the timelin— _what_?” Wade sat up with a scowl. “I’m having a moment here.”

“Why here, exactly?” Cable had been in the middle of calibrating something on the Awesome Gun, which was now in several parts on the floor. Sad!

“I was staying over with Al, but she’s been marathoning Royal Wedding shit. Super-depressing. Then I tried staying with Dopinder, but his wife kicked me out.” Mrs Dopinder was scary as all hell. “Then I heard from a friend of a friend, meaning Yukio, that Professor Xavier bought you a place. So I thought we might as well all feed from the giving hand of the Xavier family trust fund together.” Wade smiled brightly. 

Cable exhaled. The apartment was nice. Small. Acceptable distance from Xavier’s Home for Powerful People with Overdeveloped Social Consciousnesses. Bodega on the corner with a cute orange cat. In New York City, nobody gave a shit about people walking around rocking Winter Soldier arm knockoffs. Cable hadn’t even bothered to buy timeline-appropriate clothes. 

“Greymalkin,” Cable said, as he screwed one gun part to another. “Give it back.” 

“Greywhatsit?” 

“The time travel device.” 

“What time travel device?” Wade asked innocently, having palmed it into the couch once he’d sat down. “Oh, you mean… hm, there’s something under my ass… this thing? It was in your couch all this time. Funny what you’d find in a couch.” 

“Didn’t work, did it?” Cable was unimpressed. He caught Greymalkin as Wade tossed it over, fixing it back in place over his wrist. 

“Hypothetically, seeing I didn’t steal it and definitely didn’t try to get Yukio and Negasonic to look at it, no.” That had been disappointing, but maybe not unexpected. Wade’s fantasy of going back in time to fix everything had been a bit of a pipe dream from the start. 

“I told you there were only two charges,” Cable said quietly. 

“I guess it would’ve been too easy. Remove consequences and consequential deaths from a narrative and you’d tear an Infinity Gauntlet-sized hole in the plot. Fucks with character development. This isn’t the MCU. Much as the budget people wish it was.” Wade glowered over from the couch. “You know, you _could’ve_ used the charge to go home. I didn’t want to come back.” 

“I wasn’t doing it for you.”

“You totally did. We’ve had this conversation.”

“I own my mistakes,” Cable said. The gun pieced itself together and settled itself over on a bracket by the wall. The light from Cable’s dud eye ebbed. 

“Whatever. And why is it of all the cool superpowers in the world I’m stuck with a healing factor?” Wade complained. “I mean, it fights cancer, sure. And then there’s you. Wouldn’t say you’re a cooler version of me, but you’re definitely a chip off the same old plot device. You have cancer too, but it gives you a cool look rather than this—” Wade waved at his face, “—and to hold it back you get TK and an awesome gun. Instead of just a crummy old healing factor.”

“You came back from the dead several times thanks to your healing factor,” Cable said, getting to his feet. “TK doesn’t allow me to do that. And I don’t see what you mean.”

“Mean about what?”

“This?” Cable mimed Wade’s face-including wave.

“Can’t you see…” Wade trailed off. “Wait. Does everyone in the future have cancer?” 

“No?” 

“Metal cancer is making you unsee run-of-the-mill tumours?” 

“No. Don’t see the problem. Said you were handsome,” Cable clarified, as he poured himself water from the tap. 

“I thought you were being sarcastic!” 

“No?” Cable drank from the cup and stared at it again. “Still weird. Water from a tap. Just like that. In my timeline, there’s rationing in place worldwide. Countries fight wars over water… what?” He frowned at Wade, who was sitting bolt upright on the couch, his mouth opening and closing. 

“Gimme Greymalkin.”

“Why? Told you it doesn’t work.”

“Maybe it would if I rewind time just by five minutes.”

“Told you it doesn’t work that way. Even if it had power, Greymalkin can only bring you back in time to random milestones.” Cable finished his drink, put the cup in the dishwasher and turned around. His eyebrows jumped when he found Wade still staring at him. “We going to have a problem?” 

“Problem? No, who? Me? You? Are you one of those Look Past the Book Cover into the Soul Beneath kinda people? Because I’m pretty sure my soul is more fucked up than my face.” 

“Still tried to save a kid you didn’t know,” Cable said. He folded his arms over his chest and leaned a hip against the kitchen counter. “Kept me from making the worst mistake of my life. You were right. Shooting Russell would’ve been wrong. Would’ve taken me down the same path that he’d been dragged down.” 

“Excuse me,” Wade said, in a higher pitched voice, “I think you meant _saved_. I saved a kid I didn’t know. There was no ‘try’.” 

“Right.” 

“This means I can have the couch?” Wade asked cautiously.

Cable looked amused. “Or my bed,” he said, and looked Wade right in the eye. “Handsome.” 

Wade took a deep breath. “Just so I know, this isn’t the both of us merely processing the loss of the conveniently fridged women in our lives, is it?” 

“Don’t go into that,” Cable said, then looked puzzled. “Fridged? What’s that mean?” 

“C’mere.” Wade tried his best saunter. If only he’d thought to wear his ass-hugging costume over to Cable’s place instead of his Twilight Sparkle shirt and a pair of old jeans. Cable straightened up as Wade got within arm’s reach. He pressed his metal hand—hot—against Wade’s spine as Wade leaned over, nuzzling the seam between flesh and steel. The techno-organic part of Cable was warm, like a just-revved engine. Cable made a low rumbling sound as Wade pressed his tongue to it. 

“Is metal cancer contagious?” Wade asked. 

“No, and don’t sound so hopeful.” Cable’s free hand curled over one of Wade’s asscheeks, a tentative touch. When Wade didn’t pull back, Cable started to knead. Ooh. Firm grip. Nice. Wade hauled him over. Cable let him lead, content to have Wade back him up against the wall and lick inside. ‘Least Future Cyborgs with Anger Issues knew how to kiss.

Vanessa didn’t kiss like this. She was a woman who knew what she wanted and how to get it: Wade had always been swept along, there for the ride. Sometimes literally. Cable gave back as good as he got but he didn’t push. Under Wade’s palms Cable felt weirdly yielding, even the part that wasn’t technically flesh. Wade shoved his hips forward and felt Cable compress a growl between them, his hands getting a good grip of Wade’s ass and hauling him closer. 

“Y’know,” Wade said, as Cable nipped his jaw, “for someone who literally burst into my life, this isn’t really going how I thought it would.”

“Hmm?” Cable nuzzled Wade’s throat, tongue pressing over the lesions on his skin. 

“Thought you’d be all like, ‘ARRR Me Cheaper CGI Terminator, Push Against Wall, Insert A to Tab B’.” 

Cable spent a moment thinking this over, then he leaned back, thoughtful. “That what you want?” 

“Maybe?” 

“You don’t sound sure.” Cable’s hands, depressingly, were sliding back up to Wade’s hips. “This is usually easier. Can’t read people with healing factors. So I’m guessing.” 

“Wait. You’re a _telepath_?”

“Yeah?”

“You never said!” 

Cable shrugged. “Most of my powers are being used to keep this in check.” He nodded at his gleaming arm. 

“What else can you do?”

“Everything psionic. Telepathy, telekinesis, the works.” 

“So you’re like. A way less cute version of Eleven. Or I guess more accurately it’s the other way around, just that she’s more culturally resonant than you are right now.” 

Cable shook his head and settled for kissing Wade quiet. He let Wade tug him over to the couch, a fraught endeavour that had them nearly trip over a side table until they stumbled against the armrest. Cable sat Wade down and knelt between his knees, his fingers flexing against Wade’s thighs. Nearly but not quite hard enough. “C’mon,” Wade growled between breaths, “not like you’re gonna hurt me.” 

“You want this to hurt?” Cable asked, so goddamned seriously. His dud eye gleamed, but he kept studying Wade’s face. 

“Kink negotiation between adults, I like it. You?” 

“Not my kind of thing, no.” 

“Not mine either,” Wade conceded, “usually.” 

Most days everything still hurt, and thanks to superpowers there was no deadening that away with chemicals. Scales of pain, that was what worked. Something greater to make him forget for a while. Life with Vanessa cored away only functioned in distractions. Cable stared at him, sober. _Her name was Hope_ , Cable had said. Wade wished the Tinder joke hadn’t wormed out of his mouth right at that moment. It’d been a knee-jerk response to the mirrored grief he’d read on Cable’s tone, in the harsh lines of his face. Same hollow loss that he saw now. Things might have changed, but now Cable would never meet his wife. His daughter Hope would never exist. They were both processing. They’d forever be processing.

Cable leant in. This time he crushed the kiss against Wade’s mouth with a hoarse and strangled sound, his hands squeezing tight over Wade’s hips, grinding over bone. Wade snarled and jerked and bit back, fisting his hands into Cable’s jacket, against his bottlebrush hair. They breathed in grades of grief, in agonised gasps. “Processing,” Cable whispered, as though he’d heard. His cheeks were wet against Wade’s palms.

“Time will make it better and all that,” Wade said, biting out all the pithy aphorisms that his friends had tried to shove down his throat. He’d hated them all. Wade raked his nails down Cable’s back, snarled as Cable pulled off his vest to bare skin and steel. “Better to have loved and lost.” 

Cable’s eye burned, the light reflected in an ugly glow against Wade’s cheek. Something creaked and moaned in the walls, in the floor beneath them. Cable’s palms clenched down hard as he sucked in air in a tight hiss. He breathed out and kissed Wade on the mouth. Gentleness was a shock, a gauntlet throw that startled Wade out of his spiral. Slow and easy. “Was still my fault,” Wade said, subdued between kisses. “Got her killed.”

“Went after the wrong people,” Cable said, unsteady. “Made the family a target.” 

“‘Least you weren’t there when it counted. I was, and I still fucked it up.” 

“You got the people who did it. I didn’t get that far. Some asshole got in the way.” Cable cracked a tiny, sharp smile. Wade laughed. He hadn’t meant to. Mirth sat uneasily against his chest and got easier as he practiced. Looser. Wade had always armoured up by cracking jokes. Now he had nothing to say. He pushed at Cable’s shoulders instead, and was glad when Cable got the hint and shifted back. Big fingers hooked down Wade’s pants and boxers. 

“Use the terminator hand,” Wade said, grinning as Cable rolled his eye and spit in his steel palm. Yeah. That felt good. Firm grasp on the base and a confident tug up. Cable definitely had done this for others before. Maybe the future was all bi. Or pan. Maybe— 

“Quiet down,” Cable said. Wade had been free-associating out loud again. Oops. Cable bent before Wade could say something defensive, still stroking as he took the tip of Wade’s cock into his mouth and licked. When Wade yelped and dug his nails into Cable’s shoulders, Cable chuckled and took him deeper and _hell_ but he was a natural, somehow fitting Wade’s cock all the way down his throat. Inch by every glorious fucking inch. 

“Jesus mother of God,” Wade hissed, high pitched. His heels dug tight against Cable’s shoulders as Cable merely chuckled again, both his palms back to kneading Wade’s ass. Something rattled in the room to the right as Wade rolled his hips. Cable let out a stifled moan. Wade did it again, fascinated. “By the way, just because we’d probably both survive the building collapsing doesn’t mean that I want to try it,” he told Cable. 

There was a snort, then Cable started to suck, loud and sloppy and still completely unselfconscious about it. Each time Wade got balls deep down Cable’s throat Cable would moan, a hungry and grateful sound that was disorienting to hear. It didn’t make Wade feel remotely better about his loss, but it made him feel better about _himself_. Far more unsettling. 

Wade was reduced to whines and whimpers. He shoved against Cable’s rhythm. It was good and too good at the same time. Wade didn’t want to feel like this and he did. Different. This was different. Wade felt like he was being squeezed tighter and tighter, winding up and being pulled thinner and thinner, until there was daylight between them and what Wade wanted, a membrane wall that he could breach and finally touch someone else, feel something other than the stages of grief. Wade hissed warnings that Cable ignored. He cried out. Release was the most exhausting of Wade’s life—it burned out of him in a rush and left him empty. Wade sank back against the couch, breathing hard. Cable let up, eventually, wiping his mouth with the back of his palm. 

“Help you with yours,” Wade croaked, gesturing. Cable nodded. He ended up pressed against Wade’s flank, Wade’s spit-slicked hands shoved down his pants. Cable’s heavy cock was all flesh to the touch, nice and thick but nothing weird. 

“Disappointing,” Wade said, with a dirty grin that made Cable snort again. Man was tense, close to desperate as Wade stroked him. “Next time I want to be riding this,” Wade purred, and smirked as Cable gasped and thrust hard into his grip. Easy go. Cable’s eye burned as Wade lazily licked his hand clean.

#

“Your name isn’t _really_ Cable, is it?” Wade asked, after pizza, beer, and a mini Stranger Things marathon. Just a little public service, in case Not!Eleven accidentally opened any portals to the Upside Down.

Cable yawned, curled against Wade’s back on the bed. “It’s one of my names.” 

“So what did your parents call you?” 

Cable tensed, but only briefly. “Nathan,” he said, after a pause. 

“Nate. I like that.” 

“No one calls me Nate,” Cable said. He sounded reflective. 

“Okay, so I will. Every ‘Nathan’ eventually becomes ‘Nate’. Law of the jungle. And ‘Cable’ is _way_ too weird a made-up name for broader use. Seriously. I have so many jokes. And only half of them are about ports.” Wade grinned and patted Cable’s ass, which only earned him a brief puzzled frown. Huh. Maybe the future was completely wireless. “Why’d it take me this long to get your real name, huh?”

“Cable’s as good a name as any.”

Cable sounded defensive. Which meant this had to be good. “Did it have something to do with how you aren’t getting free room and board over in the Mansion?”

There was a long silence. “Maybe.” 

“Does it have something to do with Wolverine…?”

Cable opened his eyes this time. “What? What happened to Logan?”

“Ooh, first name basis! Lemme guess. Uhh. He’s your dad.”

Cable pinched at the bridge of his nose. “No. How did you even—”

“C’mon. Obvious time travel plot device. You’re a mutant who can move things with your mind. If you’re not OK with staying at the Mansion it’s probably because you don’t want to fuck with your own timeline. Ergo, your parents are probably involved. Logan’s probably slept with all the remotely interested and available women in Marvelverse, so there’s a good chance he’s your dad. Not to mention you’re probably also afraid of fucking your mom by accident or something.”

“Jesus _Christ_. No.”

“Lemme guess. It’s Negasonic, isn’t it? She’s your mom. You guys have the same emo thing going. The same blowing shit up thing going. _Plus_ she’s the only likely person of an appropriate age whose licensing we’ve got our hands on. Ooh. Maybe you don’t have a dad. Two moms and IVF?” 

“It’s not her,” Cable said, then scowled as Wade crowed in triumph. 

“ _But_ it’s someone in the Mansion!” 

“Can you just drop this? Please.” 

“If we go by shared abilities…” Wade trailed off. “Holy shit. Your mom is _Sansa_?” 

“Who?” Cable turned Wade around and kissed him before he could keep talking. “Hey. Seriously. Stop.” 

“Okay. Okay.” Wade swallowed the rest of his jokes, albeit with some difficulty. There, see. Wade could Be Nice. Especially after a blowjob, Netflix, pizza and beer.

“I’m not in the Mansion because the Professor and I have differences of opinion,” Cable said carefully. 

“He probably didn’t like the part where you were OK with shooting a fourteen-year-old kid, hm?” 

“I’ve never been interested in joining his X-Men.” 

“Yeah. Gender discriminatory title right there.”

“Or the X-Force.”

“Hey! Okay, so it’s a little derivative, but—”

“I talked to Domino,” Cable cut in. “I think we’d be better off forming a mercenary group. For the things I want to do.” 

“Unfucking the world.” Wade wasn’t sure about that. “Just checking, your plan isn’t going to involve the mass genocide of half of every living thing in the universe, right?”

“What? No!” 

“Good, because whenever people talk about controlling overpopulation it’s usually at _least_ a tiny bit racist. Never been a fan of those narratives.” 

Cable sighed, but it was a fond sound, amused. “You in?” 

Ah hell. Why not. “Sure. Let’s do it.” 

“Good.” Cable nuzzled Wade on the forehead, yawning. “Start in the morning.”

“Looking forward to it. But if you ever start making plans to create a mutant socialist utopia in the middle of the ocean, I’m just gonna tell you right now, that shit is not going to end well.”

“Go to sleep, Wade.”

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent.tumblr.com
> 
> Refs:  
> Here is A Sound of Thunder if you haven't read it before: http://web1.nbed.nb.ca/sites/ASD-S/1820/J%20Johnston/short%20stories/A%20Sound%20of%20Thunder%20with%20questions%20--Ray%20Bradbury.pdf  
> My fav time travel story is actually the First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, but it's probably too niche(?) for Deadpool to reference it, and besides, it's kinda not really traditional time travel. Fantastic book though, I really recommend it.  
> http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2018/04/avengers-infinity-war.html  
> https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/9/26/16356524/the-population-question  
> 


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